Professor Buckland on Artesian Wells. 319 



of acres of unprofitable heath into pleasant and productive 

 corn-fields. The chalk-hills, also, that form the wolds of Lin- 

 colnshire, and the wolds of Yorkshire, had been made rich by 

 processes which were now beginning to be introduced in 

 Hampshire. 



On Thursday last, the Prussian minister had called the at- 

 tention of the assembled agriculturists of England to the ex- 

 ample of good farming that is set them by the most illustrious 

 of living warriors, the Duke of Wellington, who had turned 

 his glorious sword into a not less glorious ploughshare ; and 

 near Strathfieldsaye may now be seen rich fields of barley and 

 turnips on naturally heavy clay lands, which, two or three 

 years ago, were reeking with moisture, and incapable of that 

 rotation of green and grain crops, which all good farming re- 

 quires. The Duke of Wellington was, year after year, im- 

 proving his clay lands, first by thorough-draining, which is the 

 indispensable precursor of all other improvements ; and after 

 drainage, spreading large quantities of chalk over the surface 

 of the clay. Not Jess than 1000 waggon loads of chalk had 

 during the last year, been brought from the neighbourhood 

 of Basingstoke to that of Strathfieldsaye. 



Similar improvements of poor sandy soils may be made by 

 laying upon them a good top-dressing of clay and chalk, in 

 addition to ordinary manures ; and geology had ascertained 

 the existence of several kinds of marl and clay, and also of 

 chalk, at various depths beneath the poor sandy heaths which 

 form so large a portion of South Hants, and Dorset, and 

 Berks, and under the whole of Bagshot Heath. The place of 

 these clay beds is often indicated by the oozing of water and 

 growth of rushes near the base of the sloping sides of the shal- 

 low valleys or combes that traverse these sandy plains, and are 

 occasionally covered with peat. Between Christchurch and 

 Poole, many such oozing streamlets point out spots from 

 which, by the aid of a small steam-engine and tram-road, clay 

 may be brought up to reclaim the sandy wastes around each 

 of these centres of supply of fertilizing mineral manure ; and 

 the efficacy of this process had been shewn on a small scale 

 near Poole, in little inclosures, made by a few industrious pea- 



VOL. XXXVII. NO. LXXIV. OCTOBER 1844. X 



